Northern Ireland Vs. the Protestants

The true causes of unrest are sometimes difficult to determine. Frequently, there are a mixture of political alliances, economic differences, ethnic feuds, religious differences and others: This paper looks at the unrest between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.

In Northern Ireland, "the troubles" are partly rooted in Catholic/Protestant differences, partly in political allegiances, and probably partly in hatreds that go back so far that the exact reason is lost in the mists of time.

Let’s take a minute to look at the history of Ireland. Saint Patrick (c.389-461), the patron of Ireland, came from England to Ireland to convert the inhabitants to Christianity. At the time, the only Christian religion was Catholicism. He came to educate the people and succeeded beyond any rational expectation, as Ireland eventually became almost exclusively Christian, as well as a center of scholarship and culture. Even when the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe and England in the 16th Century, Ireland remained staunchly Catholic, thereby triggering the Catholic versus Protestant conflict that plagues Northern Ireland today.

The five monarchs of the 118 year Tudor Dynasty in England (1486-1603) particularly Henry VIII (r.1509-47) and his daughter Elizabeth I (r.1558-1603) -- had an enormous impact on Ireland and its people. In addition to imposing Poynings Law on Ireland, they ousted the Catholic Church and replaced it with a Protestant Church, thereby sowing the seeds for centuries of religious conflict in Ireland. They extinguished the "Kildare Supremacy" and established the principle that the King of England automatically became King of Ireland. They partially destroyed Irish culture through an "anglicization" program that imposed England's language, laws, culture and religion on Ireland; and they "re-conquered" Ireland by defeating the Gaelic lords at Kinsale, thereby extinguishing the old Gaelic order and paving the way for plantations and eventually for "union" with England.

The Battle of Kinsale, along with the "Flight of the Earls", marked the end of the old Gaelic order, and established England as conqueror of Ireland. What followed next -- the 17th Century "Plantations" -- were perhaps the most important development in Irish history since arrival of the Celts. They divided Ireland apartheid-like into two hostile camps.

Under these Plantations, the Ulster Plantation (1609), the Cromwellian Plantation (1652) and the Williamite Plantation (1693), 81% of the productive land in Ireland was confiscated from the native Irish (Gaelic-Irish and Norman-Irish alike, but invariably Catholic), and transferred to new immigrants (invariably Protestant) from Scotland and England. The Plantations impacted Ireland in two major ways. First, they introduced into Ireland a new community, eventually 25% of the populace, which differed radically from the natives not only in religion, but also in culture, ethnicity, and national identity. Second, in Ireland's overwhelmingly agrarian economy where land equaled wealth and power (and vice versa) the Plantations caused a massive transfer of wealth and power to non-native landlords, whose backbreaking rents then thrust 85% of the natives into crushing poverty and degradation. The Plantations are the root cause of the class warfare (rich landlord versus poor tenant) and religious/cultural clashes that have plagued Ireland since 1610.

Plantations were the medieval equivalent of "ethnic cleansing" in that -- in theory at least -- all occupants of confiscated land were to be evicted and resettled in Connacht where they would be less of a military threat. Anti-Catholic animus played a role in the Plantations, but other motivations were more important. For the new immigrants, the principal motivation was fertile land at bargain rents. For the Crown, Plantations would deprive dissident Irish lords of the land that was their only real source of power; and further, there would be established within Ireland a loyal non-Irish minority which would served as an unpaid police force to keep dissident Irish in check. Halfhearted attempts at plantation had been made under Mary in the 1550s, and under Elizabeth in the 1580s, but neither had instilled the pro-English mind set sought by the Crown. But after the "flight of the earls", the time seemed right for a serious plantation program.

Although nominally directed at the aristocracy, the Plantations also devastated peasants, who suffered the loss of their property rights under the ancient Gaelic law of gravelkind, which previously had virtually guaranteed them a decent, living from the soil. It turned out that peasants were needed for hard labor, so many of them, despite the original "resettlement in Connacht" plan, were allowed to remain as farm laborers or tenant-farmers,